Meta's Muse agent hits No. 1 on US App Store in 10 days

What happened: Meta's AI agent Muse hit No. 1 on Apple's US App Store on 18 September, ten days after its 8 September launch. It overtook ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Instagram.

The numbers: Muse logged more than 730,000 US downloads in its first ten days, averaging about 73,000 a day, according to Sensor Tower. ChatGPT averaged 87,000 a day in its first eight days back in 2023, so Muse got to No. 1 with a slower pace but a faster climb.

The details: Muse is built on Meta's Muse Spark 1.3 model and acts on a user's behalf: sending email, booking trips and restaurants, filling in forms, buying tickets and cancelling forgotten subscriptions. It's available in the Muse app, at muse.ai, and inside WhatsApp. Launch connectors include Gmail, Google Calendar, Workspace, Outlook, Ticketmaster, OpenTable, Spotify, Apple Health, Peloton, Plaid and Function Health, with purchases routed through Link by Stripe.

The catch: Each user's agent runs in its own cloud virtual machine, and a separate system called Sentinel controls what it can access and do. Credentials stay outside the agent itself, so the model never sees real passwords or card numbers.

Who's affected: Pricing is free for a basic tier, $20 a month for Power, and $100 a month for Max. Meta also released a Mac app around 18 September that organises files, fills forms, and works with Messages, Calendar and Notes, with continuity to the phone via WhatsApp.

In their words: Mark Zuckerberg said: "You choose which apps and services Muse can access, and you can disconnect them anytime."

Why it matters: Meta is putting its distribution muscle behind agents, the phase of consumer AI that follows chatbots. Muse's rise shows that battle is already under way, not theoretical.

What's next: Muse launched in Canada on 18 September, signalling Meta's push beyond the US market. Fox Business and Yahoo Tech both tracked its App Store climb this week.